Doggy day care business, Bruce’s, has launched the UK’s first-ever advertising campaign made specifically for dogs. Consisting of bus stop ad placements and a range of guerrilla marketing tools, the ads have been launched to promote Bruce’s new North London site. The ad creatives feature basic human eye-level copy “nothing to see here human” with the bulk of the ad’s attention focused further down, with dog eye-level messaging encouraging North London’s pooches to try Bruce’s out and enjoy days spent socialising, learning, and having fun with a range of activities and constant love, attention, and supervision from the adoring Bruce’s team. In addition to the bus stop advertisements, the Bruce’s team has created and distributed edible dog-friendly leaflets and ‘marked its territory’ with environmentally friendly stickers to convert signs in Finsbury Park to ‘Finsbury Bark’. The new North London site offers a collection service for city-based pups to stretch their legs and socialise in the Hertfordshire countryside, enjoy a warm home-time bath and be home for dinner. The new site will offer owners the chance to have their pooches picked up and dropped off in one of Bruce’s custom-designed doggy busses.
Manchester-based ecommerce agency Fluid Commerce has been appointed by performance cycling apparel brand Le Col, beloved by Britain’s most decorated Olympian Sir Bradley Wiggins. Fluid Commerce is providing strategic expertise with Amazon’s sales platform to assist Le Col with an international expansion into the US. Using their expertise and knowledge of Amazon, Fluid Commerce will increase awareness of the brand in the US and ultimately drive sales through Amazon’s marketplace with a full-service marketing and advertising strategy.
Property marketing agency Sectorlight is to merge with B2B marketing specialists alan. agency under one combined leadership. Michael Richards, Chief Growth Officer, alan. agency, will additionally lead Sectorlight which will adopt alan.’s insight-led ‘visceral marketing’ approach before rebranding as ‘alan. place & space’. Since joining alan. agency in April, Richards and his team are on a mission to reinvigorate the ‘sea of beige’ world of B2B marketing, by finding and telling the visceral business stories to make customers feel and act differently. The merger enables alan. to expand its anti-beige visceral marketing approach into the ‘place and space’ sector.
Confused.com has been announced as the new sponsor of ITV’s prime-time soap Emmerdale. The deal, starting from July 18th, will offer sponsor accreditation on all broadcast episodes of Emmerdale, as well as all episodes of Classic Emmerdale on ITV3. The sponsorship deal is expected to be one of ITV’s biggest and most exciting brand opportunities this year as Emmerdale celebrates its 50th Birthday this October. The sponsorship was brokered and strategically driven by a collaborative effort by Zenith and Publicis Media Content (PMC). Media planning and buying has been led by Zenith which will be activated across several platforms and touchpoints, including bespoke content, branded digital and social media, licensing and on-set activity.
1HQ the global branding and communication agency, announces it has been appointed as an approved provider to the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) Communications Market Place. The agency earned the status having successfully completed the application to showcase their capabilities, credentials, and best practice, enabling the agency to now provide creative services, communications and marketing to central government and wider public sector clients. 1HQ is now one of the 160 appointed suppliers on the Communications Marketplace able to sell goods and services to the UK public sector.
Industry recognised leaders in consumer intelligence Talkwalker has appointed performance-driven marketing and communications consultancy Hard Numbers as its PR agency in the UK. Hard Numbers has been appointed to help bring the Forrester-endorsed consumer intelligence and media insights platform to even more PR, communications, marketing, and insight professionals. The agency’s remit includes thought leadership and a content creation designed to drive traffic and leads from marketing, sales enablement, and sales professionals at large corporations.
Dodl by AJ Bell is a new, app-only investment platform launched earlier this year. AJ Bell is a well-established and recognised British investment brand, that saw an opportunity to develop Dodl to try and attract a new, slightly younger audience to investing. They approached ROAST looking for a Paid Media partner to help devise a media strategy to target 20 – 35 year olds within the UK, to educate them about investing and help them achieve their saving goals by using the Dodl app. Global Media agency, ROAST, supported the go-to-market launch of Dodl by leveraging Audio Ads targeting Podcasts and across the music streaming platform Spotify and also by running high impact Digital Display.
European conversational AI unicorn CM.com has appointed Diffusion as its first retained agency in the UK after a competitive pitch process. CM.com appointed Diffusion’s Enterprise Technology team to help establish its brand in the market, drive awareness of its unique customer engagement platform, and to educate UK businesses on the opportunities offered by emerging customer engagement technologies. Based on original content designed to drive top-tier media coverage and ongoing media opportunities, Diffusion’s thought leadership campaign will establish CM.com as credible and original data analysts and experts in customer experience and conversational AI, as well as support local lead generation and conversion.
The&Academy, a new apprenticeship scheme for the advertising industry, has been launched by The&Partnership, one of the world’s fastest growing marketing networks, and mSix&Partners, a joint venture media network between The&Partnership and GroupM. Based at a brand-new Birmingham campus, The&Academy will provide full-time training and work experience to the next generation of diverse talent who might not otherwise have considered careers in the digital and creative industries. [They will learn and apply from Day 1 essential skills for the future in digital, tech and data]. In its first year, the focus is on attracting up to 25 apprentices from Birmingham and the surrounding areas. In future years, The&Academy will expand to North America and Europe.
London-based creative agency, The Brooklyn Brothers, has announced the third year of its Night School initiative to attract young people from ethnically-diverse backgrounds into the creative industries. The free training and mentoring programme combines in-person workshop sessions with online collaboration. Alumni from previous years will return to pay it forward and lead on this year’s curriculum, collaborating with guest experts across a wide range of fields to share their collective wisdom with the budding creatives. Following graduation, each student is paired with a mentor to help them take the next steps in their creative career. Throughout the process, every student develops a personal manifesto, designed to encapsulate their individual creative ambition. A number of Night School graduates now have full-time roles at the agency, including Juliana Onyenani, Junior Creative at The Brooklyn Brothers.
Lemongrass Marketing, the PR and Content Marketing Agency for Travel Brands announced that it will be trialling the 4-day week for all staff with effect from 1 September. Based on the 100:80:100 model – 100% of pay for 80% of the time, in exchange for a commitment to maintain 100% productivity, the team at Lemongrass will get paid for 5 days but work only 4. Starting for a trial period of 4 months, the Oxfordshire-based hybrid working agency will evaluate client happiness and staff wellbeing as well as business efficiency and productivity on a weekly basis.
The Marketing Practice (TMP) has announced it has rebranded, representing the latest milestone in the Group’s ambition to be the best in B2B globally. The rebrand launches as The Marketing Practice is in the midst of a period of extensive growth, having made four acquisitions in the last 12 months. Bringing multiple specialist marketing organisations together under one brand, it is now the second largest B2B agency globally, with the overarching objectives of creating the growth engine for B2B tech and to be the place to build a career in B2B marketing. The Marketing Practice is aiming to be a new breed of B2B agency. One that brings together the best in technology, data and creativity that can help tech businesses break out of siloes and into new markets. The objective of The Marketing Practice’s new branding is to be distinctive, playful and fun, with the aim of making people smile.
PR and communication firm Razor PR has joined SERMO, an independent global communications network founded by its sister agency M&C Saatchi Talk in 2009. By doing so, Razor joins and contributes to a highly influential worldwide partnership of 11 independent communication agencies with a reach of 15 countries based on shared values, relationships, and attitudes. Razor, part of the M&C Saatchi Group of Companies in South Africa, opened its doors in 2020 and quickly earned the trust of clients across multiple industries. These include the likes of BDO, Investec, Tiger Brands, Audi and Virgin Active. It challenged the industry to produce work that was more effective, more measurable, and more culturally connected.
